^he 



LIBERTY BELL 



.^v_4^Si^^..!^-^> 




ITS 



HISTORY, ASSOCIATIONS 
AND HOME 



PUBLISHED BY THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA 
FOR GRATUITOUS DISTRIBUTION 



Compiled by 

E. R. GUDEHUS 

1015 






PHILADELPHIA 

DUNLAP PRINTING COMPANY. 1315-1329 CHERRY STREET 

1915 



THE BELL'S PART IN HISTORY 



''And proclaim Liberty throughout all the land, unto all the 
inhabitants thereof ; it shall be a jubilee unto you." 

LOVE and reverence for the Liberty Bell have, of truth, been 
evidenced during only a comparatively fev^^ of the later 
years of the Bell's existence. In its early days it was 
merely a plain bell — and, regarded as a bell merely, v^as not con- 
sidered a very good one. Its authentic history is brief. Annals 
and legends have been woven to amplify facts. Yet the dry 
records made in the days when the Nation was in its formative 
period weave themselves, in the light of present-day affection for 
the relic, into a story which thrills every American. 

In Philadelphia, seat of government of the British Crown 
Province of Pennsylvania, the Assembly had been contemplating, 
as the mid years of the eighteenth century were passing, a build- 
ing for its regular meeting place. In 1729 it had duly set forth 
that it was "uncommodious as well as dishonourable for the Gec- 
eral Assembly of the province to be oblidged annually to hire some 
private house to meet and sit in," and so it was determined to 
have an assembly building. In due course it was completed, and 
as the years passed it was further determined that a distinctively 
Assembly bell should be provided to supplant the ordinary bell 
brought from the mother country. And so, with little thought 
that history which all the world would read was being made — 
that a bell was about to be provided whose peals would sound 
round the globe — and yet with prophetic vision the legislators 
ordered in 1751 that a bell should be cast in England and that it 
should have round it words from the Book of Leviticus. Robert 
Charles was the agefit in London of the Province and to him, 
under date of November i, 1751, this letter was sent: 

"Respected Friend, Robert Charles : 

"The Assembly having ordered us (the Superintendents of the State 
House) to procure a bell from England, to be purchased for their use, 
we take the liberty to apply ourselves to thee to get us a good bell, of 



about two thousand pounds weight, the cost of which we presume may 
amount to about one hundred pounds, sterling, or perhaps with the 
cliarges something more. 

"We hope and rely on thy care and assistance in this affair, and 
that thou wilt procure and forward it by the first good opportunity 
as our workmen inform us, it will be much less trouble to hang the 
bell before their scaffolds are struck from the building where we in- 
tend to place it, which will not be done 'till the end of next summer 
or beginning of the fall. 

"Let the bell be cast by the best workmen, and examined carefully 
be.fore it is shipped, with the following words, well shapen in large 
letters round it, viz. : 

" 'By order of the Assembly of the Province of Pennsylvania for the 
State House in the City of Philadelphia, 1752.' 

"And underneath : 

" 'Proclaim Liberty through all the land to all the inhabitants thereof. 
Levit. XXV., 10.' 

"As we have experienced thy readiness to serve this province on all 
occasions, we desire it may be our excuse for this additional trouble, 
from thy assured friends, 

"ISAAC NORRIS. 
"THOMAS LEECH, 
"EDWARD WARNER. 

"Let the package for transportation be examined with particular care 
and the full value insured thereon." 

Friend Charles commissioned Thomas Lister, of White- 
chapel, to cast the bell which had been ordered. The model 
decided upon was "Great Tom" of Westminster, which Henry III. 
had cast and hung in the clock tower as a memorial to Edward 
the Confessor. 

The commission duly was executed, but, fortunately, not 
well. It was foreordained, that the bell, afterward to become 
famous as the Liberty Bell, should be essentially American, not 
English. However, when Captain Budden steered his good ship, 
the "Matilda" or "Myrtilla," up the Delaware in August, 1752, 
his arrival being greeted by the pealing of the chimes in the tower 
of Christ Church, still standing — chimes, too, which he had 
brought across the sea on a previous voyage — the new bell for 
the Assembly was aboard. Under date of September i, i752> 
Superintendent Norris advised Agent Charles : 

"The bell is come on shore and in good order and we hope will 
prove a good one, fgr I have heard that it is approved by all hitherto; 
though we have not yet tried the sound, we are making a clofck for it of 




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our own manufacture, which we expect will prove better than any they 
would send us from England, where once they had it put out of their 
hands they have done with it ; but here the workman would be made very 
uneasy if he did not exert his utmost skill as we do not stint him in the 
price of his labor. The Superintendents of the State House, by me, 
return their thanks for thy care in procuring us so good a bell." 

The American spirit already was expressing itself. Superin- 
tendent Norris tells the further story: 

"The Superintendents had the mortification to hear that it was 
cracked by a stroke of the clapper without any other violence, as it was 
hung to try the sound. We concluded to send it back by Captain Budden 
but he could not take it aboard, upon which two ingenious workmen 
undertook to cast it here, and I am just now (March, 1753) informed 
they have this day opened the mould and have got a good bell, which I 
confess pleases me very much, that we should first venture upon and 
succeed m the greatest bell cast, for aught I know, in English America. 

"The mould was fashioned in a very masterly manner and the letters 
I am told, are better than in the old one. When we broke up the metal 
our Judges here generally agreed it was too high and brittle, and cast 
several little bells out of it to try the sound and strength. We fixed upon 
a mixture of an ounce and one-half of copper to one pound of- the old 
bell, and in this proportion we now' have it." 

And it is said, too, by a diarist of the time, that whereas the 
English bell had been ordered with the Biblical quotation below 
the "order of the Assembly," it came with reversed inscriptions— 
in the form of the Bell of this very day. 

But when the bell was rung its tones were not clear— perhaps 
the "ounce and a half of copper" which "our Judges" had rec- 
ommended was responsible. The people criticised. And the "two 
ingenious workmen, Pass and Stow, insisted on another oppor- 
tunity, and m June, 1753, the bell was recast and again hung in 
the steeple." Says the "Maryland Gazette," July 5, 1753 : "Phil- 
adelphia, June 7. Last week was raised and fixed in tke State 
House steeple the new great Bell cast here by Pass and Stow 
weighmg 2,080 lbs." Pass and Stow received 60 pounds, 14 shil- 
lings, 5 pence and— immortality. They had produced in America 
the Bell which every American holds sacred. 

But in those olden days there was nothing at all sacred 
about it. 

The people were not quite satisfied. And on one petition 
which the Assembly received the complaining resident alleged 
that he suffered distress by the ringing of the Bell, and he th^re- 



fore begged "to be relieved from this dangerous inconvenience, 

except at the time of the meetings of the Honourable Assembly 
and the Courts of Justice." The London founder, Lister, was 
even ordered to send another bell. 

When it arrived, Superintendent Norris says, "the difference, 
in comparing them, is not very great." In August, 1754-, it was 
ordered that the new bell be retained. The English-America 
Bell, however, remained in the tower. The other bell disappears 
from history. The American Bell makes — certainly at least 
records — history thenceforth. 

Elevated then to the steeple of the State House, in the 
summer of 1753, it sounded in tones whose reverberations ever 
carried further and more deeply into the hearts of the people 
the hopes and the determinations of the Colonists, to whom free- 
dom was more precious than life itself. 

The note of Liberty was in every tone sounded by the Bell. 

It called the Assembly together to many sessions during 
which the foundations of American liberty were laid ; summoned 
them in August of 1753 to the meeting at which it was resolved 
to continue the issuance of Province money, despite the prohibi- 
tion of the Lords Justices of the Crown, and again, in May, 1755, 
when the Assemblymen informed the Proprietary Governor that 
they would maintain the right "to judge for ourselves and our 
constituents of the utility and propriety of laws and never will 
oblidge us to make laws by directioni." It convened the Assembly 
which in February of 1757 sent "Mr. Franklin home to England" 
to secure redress for grievances ; it called the Assembly together 
in September, 1764, to receive notification from Massachusetts 
Bay that the Colonists there were determined to oppose an Eng- 
lish Stamp Act and, again, when Pennsylvania joined with the 
Bay State, it called the legislators together to prepare for a 
Congress of the Colonies, and a little later to act on Parliament's 
decision "imposing stamp duties and other duties on His Majes- 
ty's subjects in America." 

These "subjects in America" were becoming distinctively 
Americans. The odious stamps came into port aboard the "Royal 
Charlotte," and in October, 1765, the Bell, "mufifled and tolled," 
called together the town meeting which resolved that the stamps 
should not land in Philadelphia, But the Stamp Act was en- 
forced, and so the Bell, muffled again, tolled the "death of lib- 



erty," the people meanwhile burning the detested stamps. In 
September, 1766, it convened the Assembly which voted £4,000 
to the King — the last large appropriation made for such a 
purpose. 

At the call of the Bell Philadelphia merchants assembled in 
April, 1768, to protest against restrictive legislation by Parlia- 
ment; again, in July, 1768, when resolutions were adopted setting 
forth : 

"The Colonies are reduced to the level of slaves. 
"Justice is administered, government is exercised and 

a standing army maintained at the expense of the people, and 

yet without the least dependence on them. 

"The money which we have earned with sweat and toil 

and labor being taken from us without our knowledge or 

consent, is given away in pensions to venal slaves." 

Then followed the Bell's call for meetings to petition for 
repeal of the duty on tea; to denounce the buyers of such tea 
as enemies of tlie new country, and to express determination that 
the "detestable tea" which the ship "Polly" brought over should 
not be "funnelled down our throats with Parliament's duty mixed 
with it." 

Historic occasions now crowd each other. The Bell an- 
nounced that the port of Boston had been closed, and then that 
the Battle of Lexington had been fought, the tidings reaching 
Philadelphia April 24, 1775, and the consequent meeting of 
"8,000 people, by computation," resolving "to associate for the 
purpose of defending with arms, their lives, liberty and property 
against all attempts to deprive them" of these inalienable rights ; 
it summoned patriots to the memorable meeting of June 7, 1776, 
when Richard Henry Lee offered his resolutions, "that these 
United Colonies are and ought to be free and independent states 
and as such they have and of right ought to have full power to 
make war." 

And then it convened Congress for consideration of a Dec- 
laration of Independence, and on July 8, 1776, it sent echoing 
round the world the Proclamation of American Independence. 

The State House Bell was now the Liberty Bell. 

Then came the War of the Revolution ; the flight of the Bell 
to Allentown, and its return to Philadelphia and its old home in 



the steeple until in 1781, when it was lowered and rehung in the 
tower below. 

Here the Liberty Bell announced on October 24, 1781, the 
surrender of Cornwallis and freedom from England ; it welcomed 
"His Excellency the Commander-in-Chief and his lady" in No- 
vember, and in April, 1783, it Proclaimed Peace. It sounded the 
alarums of war in 181 2 and rang for peace in 181 5. The Liberty 
Bell tolled the funeral knell of Washington; its peals welcomed 
Lafayette to the Hall of Independence when he returned to 
America in 1824 and proceeding "under arches wreathed with 
flowers"; it ushered in the fiftieth anniversary of the Republic; 
it tolled for Jefferson and Adams when they entered into rest, 
"to its deep tone the slow measures of its tolling giving a very 
solemn impression"; it rang in sorrow again when Charles Car- 
roll of Carrollton died, and when the great Lafayette passed 
away. 

But once more was it to toll for a great American — for John 
Marshall, last survivor of the great characters who made the 
nation. He died in Philadelphia July 6, 1835, and on July 8, 
the very day of the anniversary of the Proclamation of Inde- 
pendence, as the Liberty Bell tolled solemnly while the funeral 
cortege moved down Chestnut street on its way to Virginia, its 
sides parted, its voice became mute and it entered with the Great 
Expounder of the Constitution into silence. 

The late Mayor of Philadelphia, Charles F. Warwick, in his 
work, "The Keystone Commonwealth," says: 

"The life of the Bell covers the most interesting periods 
of our life as a people. It has rejoiced and wept with our 
fathers ; has often rung a psean for our victories and has 
tolled a monody for our defeats. Its tones at times have 
depressed and have, again, inspired. Like an alarm of fire, 
it would shriek into the ears of the people, arousing them 
to action, and then, in tones soft and pathetic, it has mourned 
the deaths of the fathers as they passed one by one away. 

"From its watchtower in the steeple of the old State 
House, looking down on the world below, it has witnessed 
the marvelous growth and the wonderful development of the 
Republic." 



THE PROCLAMATION OF INDEPENDENCE 



GLORIOUS is the history of the Liberty Bell, always the 
voice of freedom. World important were all its peals. 
Many of them called to the State House, and afterwards 
to Independence Hall, a far greater concourse of people than 
that which assembled there July 8, 1776, to answer its summons. 
No occasion stands forth in history, however, as majestically as 
that. 

And yet at the time of occurrence it was of no widespread 
interest. No great multitude gathered behind the State House, 
around the platform which had been set up in the northeast cor- 
ner to observe the transit of Venus. Fancy and fiction have 
painted the scene in high colors; fact made it sombre. The little 
throng breathed the atmosphere of seriousness, solemnity, grav- 
ity. Its thoughts were too profound in study how liberty could 
be won against apparently insuperable odds to become ecstatic 
over resolutions. Through the vista of years the words of Jeffer- 
son seem of Divine inspiration. The throng which convened at 
the Bell's call received them reverently. But its thoughts were 
on deeds rather than words. Their significance to the Colonies, to 
the Nation which developed, to all America, North and South, to 
all the civilized world, was not then as now appreciated. 

The proclamation of the Declaration of Independence was 
in the eyes of 1776 a grave step, and yet perhaps scarcely more so 
than other occasions which had preceded it. It was but the climax 
of a series of public gatherings, each of which had gone just a 
little further than the one before towards the goal of liberty and 
freedom. 

In June preceding Richard Henry Lee offered his memor- 
able resolutions, "that these Colonies are and of a right ought to 
be free and independent States." A committee chosen by ballot 
submitted on June 28th the Declaration which Jefferson penned. 
July 1st was determined as the date for ftnal consideration, but 
the day passed on, and on July 2d the Lee resolutions were 



adopted. The fateful step had been taken. Independence was 
determined on. Secret debate continued on the Declaration, and 
on July 4th there was agreed on a public statement in the form of 
the Declaration of to-day, of what Congress had adopted 
July 2d. 

Decision was not unanimous. Patriots opposed as strenu- 
ously as others advocated. But this resolution carried : 

"That the Sheriff of Philadelphia read or cause to be 
read and proclaimed at the State House, in the City of Phila- 
delphia, on Monday, the 8th of July inst., at 12 o'clock at 
noon of this same day, the Declaration of the Representa- 
tives of the United States of America, and that he cause 
all of his officers and the constables of said City to attend 
the reading thereof. 

"Resolved, That every member of this Committee of 
Safety of the City and Liberties of Philadelphia, in or near 
the City, be ordered to meet at the committee chamber before 
12 o'clock Monday and proceed to the State House, where 
the Declaration of Independence is to be proclaimed." 

They assembled, the Committee of Inspection gathering at 
Philosophical Hall, on Second street, and proceeding to its Lodge, 
where it was met by the Committee of Safety, proceeding thence 
to the State House yard and gathering about the stage, delegates 
in Congress filing out the rear door of the State House and join- 
ing. The plain people gathered in small number; "the town's 
gentlemen were absent," remarks a chronicler of the time, for 
many of them were at their homes under surveillance because of 
suspicions of sympathy with England. Others were in the gaol 
not far away. 

Precisely at noon John Nixon read the Declaration. The Lib- 
erty Bell broke out in a paean as Andrew McNair swung the clap- 
per. Tlie people dispersed as solemnly as they came, first, how- 
ever, taking down and burning the King's Arms. Patriotism 
runs higher — on the surface — at every annual gathering about the 
historic building on recurrent anniversaries in July of the Nation's 
birthday. The great demonstration which on July 5, I9i5> bade 
Godspeed to the relic as it left the shrine was far more tumul- 
tous, far more picturesque, than that vv^hich heard the first peal 
of the old State House, but thenceforth the Liberty Bell. Few 

10 



are the word pictures drawn at the time that have come down 
to us. 

In his autobiography Charles Biddle, of Philadelphia, says: 

"On the memorable (eighth of July) I was in the old State 
House yard when the Declaration of Independence was read. 
There were very few respectable people present." 

Another diarist says, "It was a long day of sunshine and the 
night was starlit and beautiful." 

Says Sidney George Fisher, of Philadelphia, in his "Penn- 
sylvania Colony and Commonwealth : 

"Neither the passage of Lees' resolutions nor the docu- 
ment adopted on the 4th aroused much excitement in the 
country. The sessions of the Congress were secret, scarcely 
anyone knew what was being determined upon, and when the 
final result was made known it was received very quietly. 
Few people were present (at the Proclamation July 8th). It 
was not made a matter of much ceremony or importance. It 
had not then been signed, and the signatures were not all 
appended till August. The reason for this apparent lack of 
interest was that in the minds of most people the Declaration 
was not considered as very decisive of anything. The point 
that was troubling their minds was whether we should be 
able to contend in arms with Great Britain; and the Declara- 
tion was valued only as it would assist us, in that respect, by 
making us more united and getting us foreign alliance. The 
dramatic side of it was not then as apparent as it is now." 

Says Agnes Repplier, Philadelphia: 

"From the little observatory. The awful platform,' as 
John Adams calls it, that had been erected in the State House 
yard for the peaceful study of Venus, the Declaration of 
Independence was read aloud to the people of Philadelphia — 
to the few at least who gathered to hear it, and by whom it 
was received in serious and puzzled silence. The dramatic 
side of this great historic event was not, as has been often 
observed, apparent to men who thought less of the document 
itself, than of how it was to be supported and enforced. 
They had thrilled with anger and pity when Boston called to 
them for help. They had exulted jubilantly over the repeal 

II 



of the Stamp Act, and had watched with proud hearts the 
last white sail of Captain Ayres' tea ship, "Polly," as she 
turned seaward with her hated cargo. But it was no longer 
a time far passing resolutions and rejecting tea, grim war 
was at their doors, and the horror of it sobered their en- 
thusiasm and chilled the first wild rapture of defiance. The 
men who signed their names to the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence realized to the utmost all the consequences it involved 
and the terrible responsibility they had placed upon their 
shoulders. The State House Bell rang out its message, pro- 
claiming for the first time 'liberty throughout the land to all 
the inhabitants thereof;' but the people listened gravely, and 
with no apparent response. Those who knew what it meant 
knew also that liberty is not to be won by proclamation, but 
bought with the life-blood of brave men who die that their 
brothers may be free." 
It would be strange indeed, if fancy should not have supple- 
mented fact, in the recording of the events of a day so momentous 
not only to the new nation but to the world. Andrew McNair, 
who rang the Liberty Bell upon the occasion of the Declaration, 
and who rang it throughout all the Revolutionary period, from 
1759 to 1776, is the central figure in the following pleasing con- 
ception attributed to Charles Brocton Brown. 

There was a tumult in the city, 

In the quaint old Quaker town, 
And the streets were rife with people 

Pacing restless up and down — 
People gathering at the corners, 

Where they whispered each to each. 
And the sweat stood on their temples 

With the earnestness of speech. 

As the bleak Atlantic currents 

Lash the wild Newfoundland shore, 
So they beat against the State House, 

So they surged against the door, 
And the mingling of their voices 

Made a harmony profound, 
'Till the quiet street of Chestnut 

Was all turbulent with sound. 

"Will they do it?" "Dare they do it?" 

"Who is speaking?" "What's the news?" 
"What of Adams?" "What of Sherman?" 

"O God grant they won't refuse !" 
"Make some way there!" "Let me nearer!" 

"I am stifling!" "Stifle then! 
When a nation's life's at hazard 

We've no time to think of men!" 

12 



So they surged against the State House 

While all solemnly inside 
Sat the "Continental Congress," 

Truth and reason for their guide, 
O'er a simple scroll debating 

Which, though simple it might be, 
Yet should shake the clififs of England 

With the thunders of the free. 

Far aloft in that high steeple 

Sat the bellman, old and gray; 
He was weary of the tyrant 

And his iron-sceptered sway. 
So he sat, with one hand ready 

On the clapper of the bell 
When his eye should catch the signal 

The long-expected news to tell. 

See ! See ! The dense crowd quivers 

Through all its lengthy line 
As the boy beside the portal 

Hastens forth to give the sign; 
With his little hands uplifted. 

Breezes dallying with his hair, 
Hark! with deep, clear intonation 

Breaks his young voice on the air. 

Hushed the people's swelling murmur 

Whilst the boy cries joyously 
"Ring," he shouts, "Ring! grandpa. 

Ring; oh ring for Liberty!" 
Quickly at the given signal 

The old bellman lifts his hand, 
Forth he sends the good news, making 

Iron music through the land. 

How they shouted! What rejoicing! 

How the old bell shook the air, 
Till the clang of freedom ruffled 

The calmly gliding Delaware. 
How the bon-fires and the torches 

Lighted up the night's repose. 
And from the flames, like fabled Phoenix, 

Our gloriouft liberty arose. 

That old State House bell is silent. 

Hushed now its clamorous tongue, 
But the spirit it awakened 

Still is living — ever young; 
And when we greet the smiling sunlight 

On the Fourth of each July, 
We will ne'er forget the bellman 

Who, twixt the earth and sky. 
Rang out loudly "Independence !" 

Which, please God, shall never die! 



American Independence was the work of not one or a few, but of 
all; and was ratified not by Congress only, but by the instincts and 
intuitions of the nation, just as the sunny smile of the ocean comes from 
every one of its millions of waves. — Bancroft. 

13 



THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA 



"And thou, Philadelphia, the virgin settlement of this province, named 
before thou wast born, what love, what care, what service and what travail 
has there been to bring thee forth and preserve thee from such as would 
abuse and defile thee. My soul prays to God for thee, that thou mayest 
stand in the day of trial, that thy children may be blessed of the Lord, 
and thy people saved by His power." — William Penn. ( 




WILLIAM PENN 

REVERENTLY appreciative of her heritage from the days 
when the greatest repubhc in history was in the making, 
Philadelphia, Mother City of that Republic, lays her claim 
to consideration in the sisterhood of American cities on what she 
is to-day. She would be regarded as the city that is, not alone as 
the city that was — as the World's Greatest Workshop, as well as 

15 



the City of the Liberty Bell and of Independence Hall. She 
rejoices in the regard accorded her as the most American and 
patriotic of American cities; finds like, mayhap even greater, 
glory in the characterization of the City of Brotherly Love and 
the City of Homes. 

Believing herself to represent American life of to-day in its 
best estate, the appreciation which was shown by so keen an ob- 
server as the famous Li Hung Chang, foremost representative 
of the youngest and most populous of Republics, looking at her 
in the perspective of a world survey, is most pleasing. In his 
Memoirs the gifted statesman writes: 

"Philadelphia is one of the most smiling of cities. The 
crowds were better natured than any I have seen anywhere. 
Clean, nice-looking people, too, with smiles all over their 
faces, and cheers and 'hellos' and other friendly greetings 
coming from their throats. 

"I think the place is named City of Brotherly Love. 
But I am going to invent a new title — which I told the 
Mayor, and he said he would write it down — and call it the 
Place of a Million Smiles. 

"That is almost poetic, but it is proper." 

Philadelphia's industrial fame for years has been carried to 
every part of the globe; Philadelphia-made ships sail the seven 
seas ; Philadelphia-made battleships carry the flag round the 
globe; Philadelphia-made locomotives run on a ring of steel 
around the earth; Philadelphia-made bridges span African 
gorges ; Philadelphia-made electric railway cars and trucks speed 
over urban and interurban lines in world capitals, and the city 
leads the world in car building ; Philadelphia-made saws and other 
tools are in the hands of artisans of every race; Philadelphia- 
made toys are exported even to Germany; Philadelphia-made 
wheel hoes, plows and seeders are used in Asia; Philadelphia- 
made journals for home and farm circulate in both hemispheres; 
Philadelphia-made clothing keeps men warm in Arctic regions 
and cool in the tropics ; Philadelphia-made hats are as well known 
on the Strand in London as on Chestnut street. 

These are the reasons, compiled by the City Statistician, 
Edward James Cattell, on which Philadelphia justifies her claims 
to pre-eminence. 

i6 



THE WORLD'S GREATEST WORKSHOP 

Situated close to the greatest deposit of anthracite coal in 
the world, within easy distance of vast oil, iron and cement 
producing districts, in immediate proximity of the richest agri- 
cultural country in the East, on a deep channelled river, enabling 
the largest freight carriers to tie up to new docks of most ad- 
vanced modern design, the City has unsurpassed resources of raw 
materials and facilities for exportin'g manufactured products. 
Center and distributing point for a population of 30,000,000 peo- 
ple, there reside within the City limits the largest body of skilled 
labor to be found in the nation — an industrial army 300,000 
strong, distributed over 300 lines of manufacture, comprised in 
16,000 separate plants supporting 55,000 organizations — whole- 
sale and retail, banking, shippirig and manufacturing. The in- 
dustrial army is four times the size of the United States Army; 
hand in hand, the workmen would form a chain 312 miles long. 
They axe engaged in establishments employing as many as 19,000 
hands ; they are busy in more establishments with 500 and over 
workmen each than can be found elsewhere in the world. These 
plants show an individual capitalization from 30 to 40 per cent, 
greater than any other large American city. The City with one- 
sixtieth the population of the nation produces one-twentieth of 
all its manufactures. It leads all cities in the United States in the 
manufacture of hosiery and knit goods; carpets and rugs, other 
than rag; hats, locomotives; dyeing and finishing textiles; up- 
holstering materials ; street railway cars ; oilcloths and linoleums ; 
sporting goods ; saws ; sand and emery paper and cloth ; surgical 
appliances. It stands second in foundry and machine shop prod- 
ucts; sugar and molasses refining; petroleum refining; worsted 
goods; chemicals; druggists' preparations; cordage and fertil- 
izers. 

Here is located the world's largest hat manufacturing estab- 
lishment, employing 5,400 hands and producing a hat from raw 
material every 2^ seconds; carpet mills which can furnish a 
seven-room house in 28 seconds; hosiery mills with a capacity 
of 1,000 pairs every 90 seconds; textile mills with over 105,000 
hands. 

Philadelphia can produce annually 2,000,000 dozen under- 
wear; 180,000,000 yards of cotton piece goods, a pair of sheets 
for every family in the United States ; 28,000,000 yards of woolen 

17 



goods; 2,663 locomotives, capable of hauling 168,000 loaded cars 

of 50 tons capacity each ; 45,000,000 yards of carpets, enough to 
put a belt around the earth and leave i,odo miles over; 4,800,000 
hats; 6,000,000 saws, enough end to end to reach to San Fran- 
cisco; 335,000,000 bricks, enough for a two feet wide pavement 
to Yokohama. 

Every second of day and night all the year through the City 
produces $100 worth of manufactured goods; every second ten 
pairs of stockings ; every second a new tool, file, knife or saw ; 
every hour a new trolley car ; every 25^ hours a locomotive. The 
weekly wage roll for skilled mechanics aggregates $3,000,000; 
the annual output of manufactured goods has a selling value of 
v$8oo,ooo,ooo, or eight times the City's debt and four-fifths of 
the National debt. The export and import trades aggregate 
$175,000,000 annually. A new grain elevator, finest on the At- 
lantic coast, loads 16 bushels a second. 

Her workmen — all her people — are thrifty. The City is the 
home of the building association, and these in three months ad- 
vanced $7,000,000 to stockholders for home building; every 
fourth man, woman or child has a savings bank account ; one 
institution alone has a gross credit of $121,000,000 in 286,000 
separate accounts. During the depression of 1913 labor depos- 
ited as savings $30,000 a day. Every municipal permanent loan 
offered directly to the people is over-subscribed. In the last third 
of a century the City's debt increased $25,000,000, or 25 per 
cent.; the taxable property increased $1,100,000,000, or over 200 
per cent. 

THE CITY OF HOMES 

In Philadelphia as the Liberty Bell leaves there are 357,000 
separate dwellings, of which but 15,000 are frame; 250,000 occu- 
pied by skilled labor, of whom a very large per cent, are home 
owners. Two-thirds of the homes are two stories high, with six 
to nine rooms, and nearly all have modern equipment. Every 
hour a new home is added ; the average increase for the last 75 
years has been 2,000 annually; for the last 35 years 5,000, and 
for the last decade 8,000. In fifty years homes have multiplied 
from 70,000 to 350,000. Nearly every home is within walking 
distance of one of the City's 80 parks or squares with their acre- 
age of 5,000. To these homes is delivered daily 200 gallons of 

18 , 



filtered water for every man, every woman, every child, at a per 
capita cost of less than i cent per day. Paved and graded 
streets are i,8oo miles long, underlaid by 1,280 miles of sewers, 
and are lighted by 57,443 lights with 30,898,000 candle power — 
one public light for every 183 feet average. Only i,2od police 
by day, 700 by night, are required to safeguard; one officer fre- 
quently has as many as 1,800 homes under his care. Each year 
$7,000,000 is expended in public schools — 400 elementary and in- 
termediate and 8 high schools. The public and parochial 
schools are attended by 300,000 children. Students of the uni- 
versities and colleges, which have made the City an art, medical, 
dental and legal educational centre, number 25,000. 

THE CITY OF BROTHERLY LOVE 

Philadelphia was first to organize and alone constantly and 
continuously to maintain a Permanent Relief Committee, ever 
ready to listen to a call 'from any corner of the world. In thirty- 
three years it has extended aid to Russia, Italy, China, and many 
places in the United States. It maintains 3,000 societies devoted 
to the alleviation of suffering ; it has in Girard College the largest 
and most liberally endowed institution for orphans in existence. 
The College cares for over 1,500 boys, utilizes 17 marble buildings 
on a tract of 45 acres in the heart of the City, and enjoys an in- 
come-producing endowment of over $40,000,000. There are in 
the City 800 churches. 

PHILADELPHIA THAT IS TO BE 

Philadelphia faces the future with confidence. Development, 
expansions in things material and spiritual, is her goal. 

Plans have been perfected involving an expenditure within 
the next decade or less of more than $100,000,000, for improve- 
ment of the port and the 35 miles of river front, for the elimina- 
tion of all grade crossings, for the construction of a sewage dis- 
posal system, for the development of a rapid transit system by 
means of subways, elevated lines and surface extensions, supple- 
menting the present service of 2,100 cars over 600 miles of track 
ramifying through the 129 square miles of territory in the City 
limits, moving daily 1,700,000 people over a 250,000 aggregate 
mileage, equivalent to ten times the circumference of the earth 
at the Equator. 

19 



The spirit which animates the City is thus expressed : 

"Philadelphia was Mother City to the first expression 
of America's belief in the power of individual effort, in the 
might of clean living, high thinking, honest dealing. Phila- 
delphia has opportunity now to mother a new generation, to 
bring clearly before the minds of this newer generation the 
old ideals, the old lessons, associated with the formative 
days of the Republic. The men who taught those lessons 
at the birth of the United States Government have long since 
passed to their reward, but the old building in which they 
lived and labored and brought forth their wonderful docu- 
ment still remains, and the heart of that building is the old 
Liberty Bell, voiceless to-day, as are those great men who 
were fathers of our nation — voiceless in mechanical power 
to sound the note which gave our fathers courage and de- 
termination in time of crisis. But in a deeper sense, in a 
truer sense, the crack in the Liberty Bell which ended its 
career of usefulness as a bell conferred a new power, a 
new note, to stimulate patriotism. 

"What could be more fitting, what more appropriate, 
than that the old Bell, the last surviving member of that 
body which in Philadelphia founded the Republic, should 
sweep across the Continent, carrying its message of love, of 
patriotism, of faith, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, calling 
into being a new power in the people, drawing the eyes of 
the whole nation to one sacred object— symbol of that liberty 
for which America stands in the eyes of the whole world." 



20 



THE BELL'S TRIP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 



Significance of the longest patriotic pilgrimage ever made by the nation's 
most precious relic and its first journey west of the Mississippi 



HAPPILY appropriate, peculiarly significant, is this, the 
longest and the most extensive patriotic pilgrimage ever 
made by the Liberty Bell. 

The Nation's most precious relic journeys from the Mother 
City of the Republic to the Golden Gate to glorify its achieve- 
ment of the world's greatest engineering triumph, the completion 
of the Panama Canal. 

The bond of patriotism which unites East and West — the 
highway of commerce which unites the Atlantic and the Pacific ; 
these are given benediction, by the silent voice but eloquent pres- 
ence of the Bell and its proclamation : "Liberty throughout all 
the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof." 

Another triumph of science applied to the advancement of 
man, too, is peculiarly associated with this trip of the Bell. For 
within this world-epoch marking year of 1915, there was com- 
pleted another link between the Atlantic and the Pacific, as 
potent for progress, perhaps, as the great Canal. The telephone 
was run as one connected line across the breadth of the Nation — 
the human voice now can be projected over the 3,000 miles of 
mountain and valley and prairie, of woodland and stream, 
between the oceans, and with the voice of human greeting — there 
flashed across the continent a ring from the Liberty Bell, the 
first audible note* which has come from it since it passed into 
silence. In a distinguished presence which assembled at Inde- 
pendence Hall on February 11, 191 5, the Bell was given a rev- 
erent tap ; the telephone wires caught up the reverberation, the 
electrical current — spirit of this age — carried it over the continent, 
and in San Francisco the sound was heard and the people made 
glad. The new message of the Bell — East and West one, not 
separated by space nor time — reached the heart of all the people. 

21 



All the lands on the eastern shores of the Atlantic are dark 
under war clouds ; the great Republic on the western shores is 
bright in, the sunlight of peace. The message of the Liberty Bell 
rings clearer throughout the Western Hemisphere, penetrates, 
mayhap, even to the Eastern, than ever before. 

It was in appreciation of the opportunities at home and 
abroad, existing at this particular time, that the Mayor and the 
Councils of Philadelphia, the executive and legislative representa- 
tives of a great American city, coming together on the common 
ground of patriotism, joined m granting the request which came 
from every city, town and hamlet of the great West that the 
Liberty Bell be sent to the Panama-Pacific Exposition and on 
its journey pass through the wonder-working Northwest. 

The voice of patriotism was sounded nation wide ; the na- 
tion's heroes joined their plea with that of the school children 
of many States; patriotic societies throughout the United States 
sent urgent appeals to Philadelphia that assent be given to the 
removal of the Bell. 

Protest against the Liberty Bell trip, based on patriotic 
motives from a fear of the Bell's safety on so long a trip, was, 
however, highly significant of the increasing reverence for the 
Bell. 

It was not always thus. People were as patriotic in the 
olden days^as they are now, but that patriotism found dififerent 
expression. 

The majesty and grandeur of a mountain peak is impressed 
on the traveler when he looks back over the vista of distance, 
more than when he is climbing to the summit. 

And so with the flight of the years the Liberty Bell has 
grown in love and reverence and patriotism. That explains why 
trips of the Bell each year meet with greater importunities from 
those who desire to do it homage, with greater opposition by 
those who fear for its safety. 

Indeed, it is an unquestionable truth that the pilgrimages 
which the Bell has made in, the past — and doubtlessly the one it 
is now taking— have betn the potent factor in making it such a 
priceless relic. 

Time was, before the people of the Nation were given oppor- 
tunity to see the Bell, that it was not sought out. Indeed, on 
musty pages of annals and histories and legal tomes proof can 

22 



be found — and even in the Liberty Bell City itself the fact is 
not generally known — that Independence Hall, cradle of Amer- 
ican liberty, and the Liberty Bell itself, were in imminent danger 
of being disposed of under the auctioneer's hammer as property 
whose usefulness had been outgrown. 

Startling as the statement may seem, it is established with 
all the certainty and the conviction which rests in an official 
deliverance of the highest Court of the Keystone State. 

Justice Mitchell, of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, in 
a decision handed down May 15, 1893, in an appeal in a suit 
involving the selection of a site for the Washington Monument, 
now located at Green street entrance to Fairmount Park, but 
which it was proposed to place in Lidependence Square, said: 

"The title to Independence Square is, in the City of 
Philadelphia in fee simple. ... By the Act of March 
II, 1816, if the Corporation of the City of Philadelphia 
should pay $70,000 to the Commonwealth, the Governor was 
authorized and directed 'to make a deed in the name of the 
Commonwealth for said State House and Square, vesting 
the title in said corporation in fee simple.' This was done, 
and the Commonwealth parted with its title, as it would to 
any other patentee, for a money consideration. 

"The Act of 1816 is entitled 'An Act providing for the 
sale of the State House and State House Square in the City 
of Philadelphia,' and is a sad illustration of the want of 
reverence for historical and patriotic associations in our 
people at that time. It directed the Governor to appoint 
three Commissioners, neither of whom should be a resident 
of Philadelphia, who were to lay out a street or streets 
through the State House Square in such m.anner as would 
most conduce to the value of the property, to divide the 
square 'into lots suitable for building' and put them up for 
sale at auction. 

"The provisions of section 7 as to the purchase by the 
City of Philadelphia were an alternative to be accepted by 
the City within a time limited, and only in such case v/as 
the division and sale of lots for building to be avoided. The 
Act apparently regarded the State House itself as old mate- 
rial, for it makes no reservation of it and, in fact, only 

23 



mentions it incidentally in directing that *the large clock, 

now remaining within the State House,' shall be removed to 
Harrisburg, if the Commissioners think it of value enough 
to warrant the expense ; but if not, they are to sell the same 
'either separately or WITH THE HOUSE AND LOT TO 
WHICH IT IS ATTACHED.' That is all the description 
of which the historic State House was thought worthy. 

"Notably does it illustrate the growth of national and 
patriotic sentiment that, while I am writing this review of 
the Act of 1816 the Liberty Bell, which was not thought 
worthy of mention m it, but was left to be sold as old lumber 
with the walls and rafters of Independence Hall, is making 
a triumphant journey, in a special train, with special guard, 
to the gathering of nations at Chicago, and at every stopping 
place, by day or by night, meeting a spontaneous outpouring 
of love and pride and veneration not accorded to any ruler 
m the world. That our 'people were patriotic they had proved 
before 1816 by two wars, but their sense of historic venera- 
tion was small. Fortunately, it was not altogether wanting 
in Philadelphia, and the vandalism of the Act was averted. 
It ought, perhaps, be said for the legislators of 1816 that, 
though they had little appreciation of the value and force 
of historic associations, and the tearing down of the State 
House did not offend their sense of propriety, yet they were 
not without public spirit, according to their light, for while 
the Commissioners were directed not to sell lots to pur- 
chasers at prices which would aggregate less than $150,000, 
the Commonwealth was willing to sell to the City for half 
. that sum, with the condition that the square should remain 
to the people as a public green and walk forever." 

Significant, too, are other legal proceedings directly revolv- 
ing around the Bell, which were instituted some two years after 
the Chief Justice spoke. 

The Bell had rested in Independence Hall from June 2y, 
1778, when it came back from the journey it made to AUentown 
the year before, hastily, lest it be captured by British invaders, 
undisturbed and almost in seclusion, until it made the first of 
its patriotic pilgrimages that the Nation might see it. That trip 
was in 1885, to New Orleans and the World's Industrial Cotton 
Exposition. It received acclaim, veneration, all along the route. 

24 



Eight years later, In 1893, it made another trip, this time to 
Chicago, to the World's Columbian Exposition. Even greater 
was the tribute it received. The Nation's attention had now been 
attracted to the Bell. Its fame grew tremendously. 

Two years later Atlanta asked that the Bell be sent to the 
Cotton States and Atlanta Exposition. Then, for the first time, 
opposition to the departure of the Bell, arising from patriotic 
motives unquestionably, was definitely expressed. Equity pro- 
ceedings were brought by public-spirited citizens to restrain the 
Mayor and Councils of Philadelphia from removing the Bell 
from the City. 

The suit was heard before President Judge M. Russell 
Thayer and decided by him, August 30, 1895, in an opinion which 
has been the guide to those having responsibility for the Bell. 
In it he said : 

"The property of the City of Philadelphia in the Liberty" 
Bell is as absolute and as untrammeled by conditions as is 
the title by which an individual holds his personal property. 
It is the property of the corporation and entirely under its 
control. It has been said that the City is a trustee and holds 
the Bell as trustee for the citizens of Philadelphia, and this is 
true in a certain sense ; indeed, in the same sense, the City may 
be said to be a trustee for all the people of the United States, 
for it is a moral duty which it owes to the whole country, 
to take care of, and guard safely, a relic of so much interest 
to the people of the United States. But this is not such a 
trust as trammels or interferes in any way with its absolute 
ownership of the Bell. It is impossible for me to say that 
the use which is intended to be made of this Bell upon the 
present occasion is unlawful. It is not opposed to any law. 
It is the proper exercise of the City's ownership and domin- 
ion over its own property. It violates no man's rights. It 
ofifends against no public rights, no private rights. The Bell 
is not a thing to be laid up in lavender, impounded, and, 
like a Grand Lama, secreted forever in the dim seclusion of 
Independence Hall from outside barbarians. 

"The only injury it ever experienced was when it was 
cracked while hanging in its accustomed place in the steeple, 
and being tolled on July 8, 1835, as a mark of respect to 

25 



the memory of John Marshall, of Virginia, the Chief Justice 
of the United States, then lying dead in Philadelphia. If 
it was to become mute forever, it was not an unfit occasion 
for it to become so when the great Chief Justice — the ex- 
pounder of the Constitution, the comrade of Washington and 
the last of his intimate public friends — lay dead in the 
shadow of the steeple where it was hanging. It can never 
be more mute than it is now, even if it should make an annual 
journey round among the Old Thirteen (original States), 
stirring up everywhere as it goes the memories and the 
patriotic impulses which are inseparably connected with its 
history and which themselves can never grow mute. 

"I am therefore clearly of opinion that there are no 
considerations of law or justice which forbid the sending 
of the Bell to Atlanta, and that so far from violating any 
principle of law in so doing, or any public or private right, 
the City authorities are in the performance of an act both 
lawful and laudable, and which not only does not deserve 
legal animadversion, but is in itself entirely proper and 
praiseworthy." 

Collateral facts add further evidence to that of Justice 
Mitchell's opinion that the Bell was not, in, the years before pil- 
grimages on great occasions like the Panama-Pacific Exposition 
enshrined it in the Nation's heart, regarded as the Nation's most 
precious heritage. 

The rim of the Bell is rough and jagged. A former custo- 
dian is authority for the statement that in the olden days it was 
not uncommon for the caretakers of the Bell to chip ofif frag- 
ments, with a chisel, as mementoes for visitors. 

The edges of the crack are serrated, revealing the marks of 
a drill. Back in 1846 it was suggested that the Bell should be 
\ rung to celebrate Washington's birthday, and therefore, by sep- 
arating the parted sides, it was hoped that the sound would be 
clearer. And so William Eckell, officially, was set to work with 
brace and drill. 

William Linn writes these boyhood reminiscences : 

"All this commotion about the Bell makes me think 
of my boyhood days, when we would go down to the old 
Bell and, with paving stones, try to knock off a piece of it. 

26 



"If the Bell would break at all, it would have broken 
then, when these boys hammered it with pieces of iron and 
stones trying to get a piece off. 

"For nearly a hundred years no one had paid any par- 
ticular attention to the Bell. Then came the Centennial, 
when the worship began, although it had hung in the Hall 
for years. That was done, no doubt, to save it, or the boys 
would have broken it all up." 

In the "Keystone Commonwealth," written by the late 
Charles F. Warwick, former Mayor of Philadelphia and a his- 
torian of note, he says, discussing the ringers of the Liberty Bell : 
"The last ringer was Thomas Downing, 1827 to 1835. He lived 
in the steeple and the pipe from his stove protruded through 
one of its openings. It was while he was the ringer that the Bell 
cracked, in 1835." 

To-day the Bell is guarded with incessant care. Its home 
is in a glass case in the hallway of Independence Hall but a few 
feet removed from the desk on which the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence was signed, and from the corner of the courtyard where, 
on July 8, 1776, it was proclaimed to the assembled multitude 
while the Bell, then in the tower, rang out the freedom of a 
nation. 

Pilgrimages made by the Bell, in addition to those to New 
Orleans in 1885, Chicago in 1893, and Atlanta in 1895, were to 
Charleston in 1902, South Carolina Inter-State and West In- 
dian Exposition; to Boston in 1903, in celebration of the 128th 
anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, and to St. Louis in 
1904, Louisiana Purchase Exposition. 

What a contrast is afforded between this, the Bell's triumph- 
ant journey to the Pacific, and the first one it made from the 
security of Independence Hall — sanctified cradle of patriotism. 

That first journey was one of preservation; the last, one of 
patriotism. 

The Bell became an exile on that first journey. The Battle 
of the Brandywine had been, fought; the British were marching 
on Philadelphia. Patriots determined to save the Bell from cap- 
ture and possible destruction. Before Howe and his troopers 
marched into Philadelphia loving hands lowered the Bell — the 
State House Bell it was then, despite its prophetic inscription of 

27 



Liberty — and it was placed odi a truck. The bells of Christ 
Church and of St. Peter's Church received like, probably equal, 
attention. The baggage of the Continental Army, too, became a 
part of the train of 700 wagons which moved out of Philadel- 
phia, guarded by 200 North Carolina and Virginia soldiers. The 
train moved out of Philadelphia September 18, 1777, on to Ger- 
mantown, Bethlehem and Allentown, the State House Bell find- 
ing refuge in Zion's Church, which it reached safely, even though 
an old-time diary contains this entry: 

"September 29, the wagon which conveyed the State 
House Bell broke down in the street (Bethlehem) and had 
to be unloaded." 

After Washington's victory at Monmouth the Bell came 
back to the State House in Philadelphia — to what now is' Inde- 
pendence Hall — the Nation's holiest shrine. 



THE LIBERTY BELL 

From Memoirs of Li Hung Chang. 

(Permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co.) 

To my eyes they did point out the symbol of Liberty, 

And to my ears they did direct the sound. 

It was only a sound of dong-dong. 

And it came from an instrument of brass made by man. 

The bell did not ring to my ears ; 

I could not hear the voice in my ears; 

But in my heart its tones took hold, 

And I learned that its brazen tongue 

Even in silence told of struggles against wrong. 

These good sons of America 

Call the "Liberty Bell" ancient; 

But I who come from the oldest of all lands, 

A student of the philosophy of ages, 

Know what this bell speaks 

Is of Heaven's wisdom. 

Millions of centuries before the earth was born. 

It repeats the heart words of the gods; 
It repeats, only repeats ; 
But let it do so to the end. 

28 




THOMAS JEFFERSON 

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 



In congress, July 4, 1776, 

A DECLARATION 

Bv THE REPRESENTATIVES of the 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

In general CONGRESS assembled. 

When in the course of Human events, it becomes necessary for one 
People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with 
another, and to assume, among the Powers of the Earth, the separate 
and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature's God entitle 
them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they 
should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. 

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are Created 
equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable 
Rights; that among these, are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happi- 
ness. That, to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among 
Men, deriving their just powers from the Consent of the Governed, 
that, whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these 
Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abohsh it, and to msti- 
tute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and 

29 



jorganizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely 

to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that 
Governments long established, should not be changed for light and 
transient Causes ; and, accordingly, all Experience hath shown, that 
Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to 
right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. 
But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably 
the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Des- 
potism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, 
and to provide new Guards for their future Securit}'. Such has been the 
patient Sufferance of these Colonies ; and such is now the Necessity 
which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. 
The History of the present King of Great Britain is a History of re- 
peated injuries and Usurpations, all having, in direct Object, the Estab- 
lishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let 
Facts be submitted to a candid World. 

He has refused his Assent to Laws the most wholesome and neces- 
sary for the public Good. 

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and 
pressing Importance, unless suspended in their Operation till his Assent 
should be obtained ; and, when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to 
attend to them. 

He has refused to pass other Laws for the Accommodation of large 
Districts of People, unless those People would relinquish the Right of 
Representation in the Legislature, a Right inestimable to them, and 
formidable to Tyrants only. 

He has called together Legislative Bodies at Places unusual, uncom- 
fortable, and distant from the Depository of their public Records, for 
the sole Purpose of fatiguing them into Compliance with his Measures. 

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing, 
with manly Firmness, his Invasions on the Rights of the People. 

He has refused, for a long Time after such Dissolutions, to cause 
others to be elected ; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Anni- 
hilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the 
State remaining, in the meantime, exposed to all the Dangers of Invasion 
from without and Convulsions within. 

He has endeavored to prevent the Population of these States ; for 
that Purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners ; 
refusing to pass others to encourage their Migrations hither, and raising 
the Conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. 

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his 
Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers. 

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the Tenure of 
their Offices, and the Amount and Payment of their Salaries. 

He has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms 
of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their substance. 

He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies, without 
the consent of our Legislature. 

He has affected to render the Military independent of, and superior 
to the Civil Power. 

He has combined, with others, to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign 
to our Constitution and unacknowledged by our Laws; giving his As- 
sent to their Acts of pretended Legislation : 

For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us : 

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any 
Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States : 

For cutting off our Trade with all Parts of the World : 

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent : 

For depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefit of Trial by jury: 

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended Offenses: 

30 



For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighboring 
Province, establishing therein an arbitrary Government, and enlarging 
its Boundaries, so as to render it at once an Example and fit Instrument 
for introducing the same absolute Rule into these Colonies : 

For taking awajr our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, 
and altering, fundamentally, the Forms of our Governments : 

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves in- 
vested with Power ^o legislate for us in all Cases whatsoever. 

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Pro- 
tection and waging" War against us. 

He has plundered our Seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our Towns, 
and destroyed the Lives of our People. 

He is, at this Tims, transporting large Armies of foreign Mercena- 
ries to compleat the Works of Death, Desolation, and Tyranny, already 
begun, with circumstances of Cruelty and Perfidy scarcely paralleled in 
the most barbarous Ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized 
Nation. 

He has constrained our fellow Citizens, taken Captive on the high 
Seas, to bear Arms against their Country, to become the Executioners 
of their Friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. 

He has excited domestic Insurrections amongst us, and has endeav- 
ored to bring on the Inhabitants of our Frontiers the merciless Indian 
Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare is an undistinguished Destruc- 
tion of all Ages, Sexes, and Conditions. 

In every stage of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for Redress, 
in the most humble Terms; our repeated Petitions have been answered 
only by repeated Injury. A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by 
every Act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free 
People. 

Nor have we been wanting in Attentions to our British Brethren. 

We have warned them, from Time to Time, of Attempts made by 
their Legislature to extend an unwarrantable Jurisdiction over us. Wc 
have reminded them of tlie Circumstances of our Emigration and Set- 
tlement here. We have appealed to their native Justice and Magnanim- 
ity, and we have conjured them, by the Ties of our common Kindred, to 
disavow these Usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our Con- 
nections and Correspondence. They, too, have been deaf to the Voice 
of Justice and Consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the 
Necessity which denounces our Separation, and hold them as we hold 
the rest of Mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace, Friends. 

We. therefore, the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF 
AMERICA, in General Congress Assembled, appealing to the Su- 
preme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions, do, 
in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, 
.solemnly publish and Declare, That these United Colonies are, and of 
Right ought to be, Free and Independent States; that they are ab- 
solved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political 
Connexion between them and the State of Great Britain, is, and ought 
to be, totally dissolved; and that, as Free and Independent States, 
they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, 
establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Inde- 
pendent States may of right do. And, for the support of this Declara- 
tion, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence, 
we mutually pledge to each other, our Lives, our Fortunes, and our 
sacred Honor. 

Signed by order and in behalf of the Congress. 

JOHN HANCOCK, President. 
Attest : 

CHARLES THOMPSON, Secretary. 

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